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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works
'Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with
gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that
it's all true.' Time In this thrilling panorama of real-life
events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a
secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic
middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York's
Chinatown, managed a multimillion-dollar business smuggling people.
In The Snakehead, Patrick Radden Keefe reveals the inner workings
of Cheng Chui Ping aka Sister Ping's complex empire and recounts
the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down.
He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it
pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America,
and along the way he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of
undocumented immigrants and the intricate underground economy that
sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in
narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story
and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in
America.
Here are Sappho's songs and poems as English poems, all her famous
pieces, all the fragments that can make connected sense, and all
the discoveries of 2004 and 2014. These translations set out to be
good English poetry first and foremost, and succeed well beyond
other current versions. They have been made directly from Sappho's
Greek, by a poet with three collections to his credit, and are
relatively close to the Greek. Each piece has a concise footnote
that explains references and allusions, and suggests critical
appreciation. A substantial Afterword says much more about Sappho's
themes, her art and style, and her historical setting. Sappho is
one of the greatest poets of the western world. She lived on the
Greek island of Lesbos around 600 BCE, near the very beginning of
western literature, and composed 300 or so poems and songs. Her
poems create a woman-centred world in which women and relationships
are highly valued, a world of beauty and grace, love and loss,
sandals and hairbands, all sometimes exalted and idealised. She
opposes women's values to those of the dominant male society around
her, and is the first to do this in the western canon. She was
famous in her lifetime and has been deeply admired ever since.
A scholarly edition of letters by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The
edition presents an authoritative text, together with an
introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.
Essays from a Native American grandfather to help navigate life's
difficult experiences. Offered in the oral traditions of the Nez
Perce, Native American writer W. S. Penn records the conversations
he held with his granddaughter, lovingly referred to as ""Bean,""
as he guided her toward adulthood while confronting society's
interest in possessions, fairness, and status. Drawing on his own
family history and Native mythology, Penn charts a way through life
where each endeavor is a journey-an opportunity to love, to learn,
or to interact-rather than the means to a prize at the end. Divided
into five parts, Penn addresses topics such as the power of words,
race and identity, school, and how to be. In the essay "In the Nick
of Names," Penn takes an amused look at the words we use for people
and how their power, real or imagined, can alter our perception of
an entire group. To Have and On Hold is an essay about wanting to
assimilate into a group but at the risk of losing a good bit of
yourself. "A Harvest Moon" is a humorous anecdote about a Native
grandfather visiting his granddaughter's classroom and the
absurdities of being a professional Indian. "Not Nobody" uses "Be
All that You Can Be Week" at Bean's school to reveal the lessons
and advantages of being a "nobody." In "From Paper to Person," Penn
imagines the joy that may come to Bean when she spends time with
her Paper People-three-foot-tall drawings, mounted on stiff
cardboard-and as she grows into a young woman like her mom, able to
say she is a person who is happy with what she has and not sorry
for what she doesn't. Comical and engaging, the essays in Raising
Bean will appeal to readers of all backgrounds and interests,
especially those with a curiosity in language, perception, humor,
and the ways in which Native people guide their families and
friends with stories.
Of the spiritual odysseys which dominate the literature of
nineteenth-century England, Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua is
universally acknowledged as one of the greatest and yet one of the
most difficult. Newman wrote the Apologia in 1864, as a reply to
Charles Kingsley's attack on his veracity and that of his fellow
Roman Catholic clergy; the following year he revised it extensively
and thereafter amended new impressions almost until his death in
1890. This fine edition, long unavailable, has been reissued for
the centenary; it includes all the variants resulting from Newman's
revisions, in both the printed texts and the surviving manuscripts.
Lucid and lyrical, Lucienne Bestall’s debut collection extends reflections on the seductions and limitations of language. With words and pictures borrowed from literature, contemporary art, art history, and mass media, Except for Breath asks after those experiences that elude simple description and turn instead to image and metaphor.
The collected essays appear an unlikely gathering – taking as their respective subjects death, disappointment, divine love, an unfamiliar city, the news, and headaches. Yet while each is discrete, together they share subtle aff inities, their narratives shaped by memory’s imprecisions and dreams retold, by magical thinking and wishful thinking, and coincidence mistaken as sign.
Pairing art writing and life writing, Bestall’s limpid prose is delicately revealing of her subjective encounter with a shared repertoire of familiar texts and images.
Agamemnon is the first of the three plays within the Oresteia
trilogy and is considered to be one of Aeschylus' greatest works.
This collection of 12 essays, written by prominent international
academics, brings together a wide range of topics surrounding
Agamemnon from its relationship with ancient myth and ritual to its
modern reception. There is a diverse array of discussion on the
salient themes of murder, choice and divine agency. Other essays
also offer new approaches to understanding the notions of wealth
and the natural world which imbue the play, as well as a study of
the philosophical and moral questions of choice and revenge.
Arguments are contextualized in terms of performance, history and
society, discussing what the play meant to ancient audiences and
how it is now received in the modern theatre. Intended for readers
ranging from school students and undergraduates to teachers and
those interested in drama (including practitioners), this volume
includes a performer-friendly and accessible English translation by
David Stuttard.
Best known for his existentialist novel The Outsider, set in
French-occupied Algeria, Albert Camus was profoundly influenced by the
landscapes, towns and traditions of his youth. Selected here are some
of his finest personal essays about Algeria and its environs, including
the luminous ‘Nuptials at Tipasa’, one of his earliest works where he
developed the themes that would inform his later philosophy: to thrive
now, without hope for paradise, as mortal life alone can be worthwhile.
The Meditations of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius are a readable
exposition of the system of metaphysics known as stoicism. Stoics
maintained that by putting aside great passions, unjust thoughts
and indulgence, man could acquire virtue and live at one with
nature.
HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of
best-loved, essential classics. No man can live a happy life, or
even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom Lucius Annaeus
Seneca (4 BC-AD 65) is one of the most famous Roman philosophers.
Instrumental in guiding the Roman Empire under emperor Nero, Seneca
influenced him from a young age with his Stoic principles. Later in
life, he wrote Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, or Letters from a
Stoic, detailing these principles in full. Seneca's letters read
like a diary, or a handbook of philosophical meditations. Often
beginning with observations on daily life, the letters focus on
many traditional themes of Stoic philosophy, such as the contempt
of death, the value of friendship and virtue as the supreme good.
Using Gummere's translation from the early twentieth century, this
selection of Seneca's letters shows his belief in the austere,
ethical ideals of Stoicism - teachings we can still learn from
today.
Griefseed is a gift, an offering from the pen of Malika Ndlovu that seeks to transform the ways we think about and process grief.
Multidisciplinary in scope, the text includes poems, personal essays, images, and reflections on grief that punctuate the life story of the poet, offered here as medicine. These creative pieces function as both window onto an individual woman’s life as she has journeyed with, through and beyond grief; as well as a mirror, inviting the reader to see their own lives and losses reflected within Ndlovu’s.
This invitation to sit with grief, hold it, look it in the eye, and tend to it, is also an invocation to consider multigenerational relationships – how grief cements our relationships to the past, to ancestors, to descendants. To note where grief echoes along kinship lines, spreading itself throughout the branches of family trees. How centuries of grief from our grandmothers and grandfathers lodge themselves in our own bodies, crying out for release, relief and processing. If we dare to take up this visceral knowing, grief can transform us, becoming a generative site for renewal, rethinking, recasting.
From his first novel, This Side of Paradise, which brought him a
blaze of youthful fame, to his last, unfinished novel, The Last
Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald's appeal as one of America's most
quintessential artists has continued to maintain its hold on
twenty-first century readers. In this reader-friendly study of
Fitzgerald's major fiction, Michael K. Glenday: - Offers new
readings of the author's canonical works, including The Great
Gatsby and Tender Is the Night - Draws on the very latest research
in his reassessment of the ideas and significance of Fitzgerald's
major novels - Explores the core themes of the novels, as well as
their considerable contribution to the spirit and complexity of
modern-day American culture Assuming no prior knowledge, this book
is ideal for those seeking a lively, informed introduction to
Fitzgerald's fiction, as well as those looking for fresh and
original insights into his extraordinary work.
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My Mother Laughs
(Paperback)
Chantal Akerman; Introduction by Eileen Myles; Translated by Danielle Shreir; Afterword by Frances Morgan
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R455
R412
Discovery Miles 4 120
Save R43 (9%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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The Editors of Irish Pages - Chris Agee, Cathal O Searcaigh,
Kathleen Jamie and Meg Bateman - have assembled a new issue of the
journal, entitled "The Anthropocene." It aims to evoke the
escalating global ecological crisis in the round, through many of
its key components, including climate change, deforestation, the
treatment of animals, oceanic pollution and over-fishing, the
melting of glaciers, extinctions, land-use, plastic pollution and
the waste crisis, the eco-vandalism of mining and the fashion
industry, the extermination of indigenous peoples and languages,
biodiversity and ecocide generally, and so on - and on. * A certain
amount of poetry and prose deals with humanity and human
consciousness more generally, in their historical, cultural,
psychological, artistic and religious dimensions. * There is also a
special section devoted to writing on the Pandemic. * As with other
issues, however, there is also work included that does not bear
explicitly on the theme of the issue.
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